You are invited to participate in a Virtual World Community Forum on Desertification and Citizen Action—Saving the Life-Giving Soils of the World that will take place Tuesday, February 28 through Tuesday, March 6, 2012. The Forum is being co-sponsored by the secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), EarthAction, and The Global Citizens Initiative (TGCI). The Forum is being made available at no cost to participants.

A study by a Rodale Institute in Kutztown, PA says that the main advantage of organic produce over conventional is not in its health benefits. The 30-year study shows that there are major ecological benefits to organic agriculture.

Global Response, the action program of Cultural Survival, and EarthAction, a global network of over 2,000 organizations, are working together in support of the Prey Lang Community Network to protect and save their forest. On our websites below you can find links to communicate with Cambodian officials to urge them to cancel existing land concessions and create a sustainable management program with the permanent participation of the Prey Lang peoples. We ask your organization to please share this information widely, with other organizations, with your members, and in your newsletters.

Lawmakers have proposed narrowing the planned highway through the Khimki Forest from four lanes to two lanes, but that simply wouldn't be enough to save the rich wildlife, endangered species, and beloved birch trees from deforestation. The Movement to Defend Khimki Forest is now filling a lawsuit against the highway builders, PO 'DorInzhStroyProyect' LLC in an effort to save the threatened ecosystem.

Prey Lang issue was selected as the next Cultural Survival/Global Response campaign. Cultural Survival, an organization with a consultative status with the United Nations, has partnered with indigenous communities around the world to help them defend their cultures, lands, and languages for nearly 40 years.

What if there existed a material that could help solve world hunger, fight climate change, and offer a solution for energy shortages to boot? Recent studies on biochar say that it may be just the product, and here’s the kicker: it has been around for at least 2,000 years.

Media Alert: Sponsorship for Journalists to Attend the UNCCD COP 10, Changwon, Republic of KoreaThe UNCCD secretariat will sponsor the participation of a total of four developing country journalists, drawn from the Africa, Asia & the Pacific and the Latin America & the Caribbean regions, to the tenth session of the Conference of the Parties that will take place in Changwon, Republic of Korea, from 10-21October 2011. The secretariat will cover the travel and accommodation costs for the duration of the conference.

In this International Year of the Forest, please help save Cambodia's Prey Lang (pronounced ‘Pray Long’) forest, the last large primary forest of its kind on the Indochinese peninsula. About 200,000 people, mostly indigenous Kuy, live in or around the forest and are dependent on it for their livelihoods and culture.